Current and historical discussions of the best teams and players across the nation, along with question sets and tournaments. The board-run national polls also take place in this forum. Region-specific discussion live under this forum.

I'm preparing to send out the midseason high school quizbowl poll. If you do not receive an email from me this evening but would like to submit a ballot, shoot me a PM or email (g.brisontrezise [at] gmail). The submission deadline will be Thursday, Jan. 4 at 1 a.m. EST. I welcome ballots from coaches, players, tournament directors, and other knowledgeable parties. As I have previously, I will post all ballots publicly after compiling and sharing the ultimate ranking. As I did for the preseason poll, I will subtract from each team's vote total the lowest and highest rankings it receives. I do not plan to conduct a small-school-specific poll presently. Identifying teams both eligible and worthy of consideration for such a poll is challenging, but if you're familiar with the circuit and interested in conducting a poll either independently or jointly, drop me a line.

-- As I did for the preseason poll, I dropped the highest and lowest rankings from each team's vote total. Those selections appear in red on the ballot spreadsheet.

-- Each ballot represents the studied opinions of the person who submitted it, not the institution with which he or she is affiliated. Affiliations are provided for identification purposes only.

-- The number of voters who partook in this poll — 23 — appears to be a record. In the interest of quality control, if the pre-nats poll attracts as many voters, I'll likely drop the two highest and lowest rankings.

-- Eight of nine U.S. Census Bureau divisions are represented among those who submitted ballots. Paging anyone from the Mountain West...

-- I encourage voters to offer explanations / considerations below, and invite those who did not submit ballots to weigh in with their thoughts. That said, please refrain from harsh criticism of any individual ballot; voters are volunteers making good-faith attempts to distinguish between ultra-talented teams.

I actually weighted EFT/Penn Bowl/hard college things less heavily than regular difficulty stuff, partly because the PPB adjustments get kind of wonky when there's only a handful of high school teams playing a set, and also partly because I feel like the national tournaments (especially HSNCT) are actually closer in difficulty to an IS set than something like Penn Bowl.

Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. Edited: They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) but I agree with Daniel, ppbs from college sets aren't totally reliable.

I'm surprised people didn't put Hunter in their top 5 since it seemed clear they would have beat DCC A at that one tournament had Chloe not left. They also seem to be consistently improving, so I'd say Hunter is once again a contender for HSNCT at least.

Comparatively low ranking for Rockford Auburn is based partially on a lack of stats, partially on their ppb at WAO II, and partially on their nats placements from last year.

Last edited by cat on Mon Jan 08, 2018 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dnlwng wrote:I actually weighted EFT/Penn Bowl/hard college things less heavily than regular difficulty stuff, partly because the PPB adjustments get kind of wonky when there's only a handful of high school teams playing a set, and also partly because I feel like the national tournaments (especially HSNCT) are actually closer in difficulty to an IS set than something like Penn Bowl.

That's a fair point, though I only really used college difficulty stuff as a top 4 tiebreaker(as I felt that they were within the zone where ppb differences are almost impactless on reg difficulty)

cat wrote:Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) and good but not as impressive PPB at WAO II

Uhhh I don't think Taylor played WAO II

Jakob MyersMSU 'Fall 19ish, Naperville North '17"No one has ever organized a greater effort to get people interested in pretending to play quiz bowl"-Ankit Aggarwal

cat wrote:Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) and good but not as impressive PPB at WAO II

Uhhh I don't think Taylor played WAO II

Jakob is right. You might be thinking of EFT, which we played over Skype shorthanded and with another player unaffiliated with Taylor.

EDIT: Oops, just scrolled up to see you already edited your initial post.

William GoldenHarmony School of Excellence '15James E. Taylor High School '19Writer, NHBB

cat wrote:Just want to say I completely overlooked Katy Taylor's performance on IS-170, so I under-ranked them by quite a bit. Still, I'd probably only have put them around top 10 because of the P/T ratio. They had a really impressive PPB at Penn Bowl (about the same at Virginia A!) and good but not as impressive PPB at WAO II

Uhhh I don't think Taylor played WAO II

Jakob is right. You might be thinking of EFT, which we played over Skype shorthanded and with another player unaffiliated with Taylor.

EDIT: Oops, just scrolled up to see you already edited your initial post.